A Right Turn in Viet-Nam - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Right Turn in Viet-Nam

 

 

And whether we shall meet again, I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take.
Forever and forever farewell…
If we do meet again, why we shall smile;
If not, why then this parting was well made.

 

Julius Caesar V.i.125-129

 

 

This is not a metaphor for anything

Only a memory of driving an ambulance

A clapped-out relic of the Second World War

On a street on the Tien Sha Peninsula

 

1969

 

For a left turn the driver extends his left hand

And waves

It’s okay to wave back, but that’s not the point

For a right turn the driver extends his right hand

And waves

It’s okay to wave back, but that’s not the point

If there’s a passenger, he extends his right hand

And waves

It’s okay to wave back, but that’s not the point

If there are two passengers, the one most to the right…

But you get the point

It’s okay to wave back – that’s the point

 

A Dodge ambulance, a Vietnamese Army Jeep, and a Renault

Meet at an intersection – and somehow miss each other

 

And I miss Viet-Nam.

                                                 If we do meet again…

Cats Creep in on Measurable Meter - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

Cats Creep in on Measurable Meter

 

Having Coffee with Carl Sandburg

 

Little cats do not creep as the sleepy fog creeps

But rather in a so-soft measurable meter -

Besides, the fog does not wear little bells

Or an electronic tracker to beep its creep

 

In the foggy hours of the untimed night

Dear cat pads silently across my face

And mews her gentle let-me-out song

To join the sacred mysteries on misty fields

 

At dawn I ask her what strange worlds she has spanned -

She sweetly purrs to me, “you wouldn’t understand”

A Window on the Century - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Window on the Century

 

Pasternak is said to have raised a window

On a sunny winter day to ask

“Children, what century is it outside?”

A logical question

Restricted Area - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Restricted Area

 

No public or media access

 

Cameras and recording devices prohibited without prior authorization

 

Whoever our government orders beaten or shot is not our business

 

God bless America

The Voices are Talking about Nat - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Voices are Talking about Nat

The Voices slither about like Lady Macbeth

Claiming arcane knowledge of life and death

Hissing subtly with their smoky breath

Their business manager is a dude named Seth

 

(Seth attends art school at night and says his instructors don’t understand his depth of existential being-ness and, like, stuff.)

 

They (The Voices, not Seth) visit me nightly when I’m asleep

Approaching me in crouch and crawl and creep

Desiring to drag my soul down into the deep

Piling my vanities onto a vermiculous heap

 

(The Voices took my evening class at Cinder Block Community College and slouched sullenly in the back wearing their Grateful Dead baseball caps on the few occasions they bothered to show up. They filed a complaint against me for dropping them.)

 

They usually lurk in my right parietal

So, shhhhh! - they’re rather anti-societal

 

(They’re all The Office fans and are looking for affordable housing in Scranton if you know someone with a deal.)

Plato's Alligator of the Cave - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Plato’s Alligator of the Cave

 

The real reason Plato missed Socrates’ execution

 

Plato, in a moment famously historical

In that scary cave had a philosophical hunch

He took an alligator for allegorical

The alligator, alas, took him for lunch

'Flu Jabs at the Supermarket with Rotisserie Chicken and Anaphylactic Shock - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

‘Flu Jabs at the Supermarket

 

To the supermarket with a shopping list:

 

1 Brookshire Brothers rotisserie chicken

 

1 bag of Purina dog chow

 

2 pints of Coffee Mate for this low, low price

 

A half-gallon of No Pulp Florida’s Natural

A Farmer’s Cooperative Since 1933

100% Premium Orange Juice from Concentrate

Owned by Florida Farmers

 

And a ‘flu jab. Not by Florida farmers

 

Next week my nurse practitioner has a special on butter

Which will be, as always, country farm fresh